Arunachal Pradesh Experience

2014.01.30

My journey to Arunachal Pradesh is a continuation of my creative journey exploring our possibilities of creating community and creating a future for our community and for our world. This is my journal from my journey to Arunachal Pradesh and my observations on where I am in my creative journey.

I am traveling with Stephen Inglis, who has worked with the Cree nation to develop and create the Cree Cultural Institute in northern Quebec, who has worked with many of the creative indigenous communities of Canada as head of the research and curatorial functions at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, who earned his Masters degree in Indian cultural expression at the University of Calcutta, and his Phd at UBC, and Bill Semple, an architect who has been working with northern communities and indigenous people building housing and creating community infrastructure all his life, who has a Masters degree in Tibetan Architecture, and who has spent a lot of time in Tibet and Nepal and Bhutan as well as northern Canada. They are both appreciative of Buddhist and indigenous cultures.

Our journey was made possible by the Centre for Cultural Research and Documentation in Itanagar who arranged our tour and our permit to enter the land of the dawn-lit mountains.

About Arunachal Pradesh

Nestled in the Himalayan foothills in the extreme north-east of India is Arunachal Pradesh, an isolated remote and sparsely populated state that is home to an astonishing diversity of ethnic societies. Few regions of the world can match the wide range of languages and religions, diet and dress enclosed within the state’s 83,700 square kilometres. A million inhabitants are divided into 26 major tribal communities, each with its own distinctive dialect, lifestyle, faith, traditional practices and social mores, living side by side with about 30 smaller communities. In the far west live the Sherdukpen and Monpa tribes, practitioners of the ritualistic Tibetan form of Buddhism, adept at mask-making and pantomime dances. The Adi and Nyishi people live in the state’s heartland and worship their gods at elaborate altars crafted out of bamboo and cane. In the extreme south-east of the state, the Wanchos are known for the quality of wood carvings they create. In the east of the region, the Idus are expert textile-weavers and their costumes are a rich tapestry of hues and designs, while the Apatani are famous for their basket-weaving, their strong village institutions and social networks. The Simong, who inhabit the forbidding northern uplands, climb up mountain peaks to perform their rituals and collect poisonous aconite plants to use on their arrow-tips for hunting.

Threats to a Hidden Community

For 36-year-old film-maker Moji Riba, the cultural richness of Arunachal, his home state, is “like a wonderful shawl woven in a myriad of colours and patterns”. Situated far east of the bulk of India, the state has borders with Tibet (China), Myanmar and Bhutan, but it is isolated by high mountains and dense forests, and regulated by a strict tribal protection policy that requires even Indian citizens to have a special permit to enter the region. As a result, the ethnic groups of Arunachal were, until recently, shielded from external influence. “The Arunachali have evolved an enviable understanding of their immediate environment, finding imaginative ways of survival in their rugged homeland,” Riba explains. “Over time, they have devised a bold celebration of the pageantry and patterns of everyday life. There is much to learn from their contributions to folklore, arts and crafts and philosophy.”

Today, however, economic development, improved means of communication, the exodus of the young and the gradual renunciation of animist beliefs for mainstream religions threaten Arunachal’s colourful traditions. “It is not my place to denounce this change or to counter it,” says Riba. “But, as the older generation holds the last link to the storehouse of indigenous knowledge systems, we are at risk of losing out on an entire value system, and very soon.” The risk of many of these cultures disappearing in a generation is particularly great as almost the entire body of local wisdom — from religious chants to tribe histories, from love songs to agricultural rituals — exist today only in the oral tradition. The death of every older person in a village means the loss of part of the local heritage.

The Inner Line

When the Government of India extended its administration over the region now known as Arunachal Pradesh, it continued the long-established policy of protecting the tribal populations inhabiting the hills which surround the plains of Assam against incursions and exploitative practices of people from the lowlands. Fundamental to this policy was the maintenance of the so-called “Inner Line,” a boundary running along the foothills, which no plainsman was allowed to cross without a written permit. Inhabitants of the hills were free to cross this line in either direction, for there was no intention of keeping the hillmen within their territory, only of keeping the lowlanders out.

In the days of British rule there was in nationalist quarters considerable criticism of the fact that Indian citizens should need special permission to enter any part of India, but it is to the credit of the leaders of post-independence India that they were realistic enough to retain the Inner Line policy in order to allow the tribesmen of Arunachal Pradesh to develop undisturbed by outsiders competing for the resources of the hill regions. The protection afforded to Apa Tanis and other tribes of Arunachal Pradesh by the Inner Line prevails to this day, and we shall see presently how great were the benefits which they derived from the breathing space

The Brokpa Story

Shot over a period of one year, this film highlights the predicament of the Brokpas, the semi-nomadic yak herders in the remote & beautiful north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, India. A classic tale of the old vs the new. While the elders continue to practice age old customs and traditions, and even methods of livelihood, the young ones have other plans.
The high costs involved with yak rearing has discouraged the Brokpas to continue with their traditional way of life. Since major agriculture is almost non-existent above 3,000 metres, highlanders are dependent on outputs from livestock, mainly yak, for their livelihood.

The journal

14.01.30 Thursday

I leave for Calcutta today on my way to Arunachal Pradesh nestled between Burma and Bhutan in northern India. These past three weeks in Vancouver have been full and exciting as all the dots seem to be moving forward, and connecting, and continuing to appear. I am constantly reminding myself to keep my attention and my energy focused on who I am and where I am, and on my appreciation of my experience, on what I am doing, and on my progress.

Being conscious of who I am, and how I am, and how I feel, and what I think, and how I think is how I improve my ability to connect with myself and connect with others. When we come to appreciate and accept our experience of life, and our human nature, and our personal interests, we can see each other as human beings with the same experiences, nature, and interests.

Our common experiences, common nature, and common interests are the common context and environment in which we are all pursuing our common enterprise, – to improve our experience of life, to evolve as a human being, and to contribute to creating a better experience of life for others, – to pursue what we care about and care to contribute to creating.

We can all improve our ability to consciously explore and create connections with our experience to excite new ideas, new imagination, new interests, and new enterprise.

14.01.31 Friday

Heathrow Airport and a nine hour layover on my flight to India. Now that I am moving from my studio to the stage I am able to enjoy the reward of creating each new dot of media and connecting the dots to other media and to other communities of creative enterprise. My creative enterprise is creating connections with community media.

Our creative enterprise is creating connections with community media. Each connection increases the contribution of the media to our ability to create possibilities. Everyone exploring community media, and the connections the media is creating, will create connections with their own experience, with their own interests, and with their own ability to observe, explore, and consider how the media connects with their own creative enterprise.

If I am going to enjoy the creative experience, I need to be able to observe on and explore my experience appreciatively. If I am going to enjoy creating with my experience, I need to be consciously appreciative of who I am and what I am doing and what I am experiencing. If I want to enjoy the experience of creating for others I need to be consciously appreciative of their experience.

Our interest is to increase the ability of community media to create connections for enterprises contributing to our common human interests, and to connect media to contribute to the creative interests and creative enterprises of our communities of common interest and common enterprise.

My idea of creating real time marketplaces has evolved to creating communities of common interest, communities of common enterprise, and communities of creative enterprise creating connections with community media. How do we improve our ability to create connections with community media.

We improve our ability to create connections between media and our own experiences, interests, and enterprise by improving our media literacy. We improve our ability to create connections with media we contribute to the community by improving the media literacy of the world we want to create connections and relationships with.

We are creating community media to create connections and to improve our media literacy. If we improve our media literacy we improve our ability to create with our experience. We improve our ability to create with our experience with more conscious appreciative observation, exploration, and consideration of the media we experience and how it connects with and contributes to our experience and our interests.

Our overarching interest is to explore, create, and connect media that contributes to improving our ability to create possibilities for our future, to increasing the size and contribution of the I CARE community, and to excite the imagination and contribution of our communities of creative enterprise.

I am not an optimist or a pessimist. I am a realist. We need to either create a world that is sustainable for a growing population or find a way to hold our population to a sustainable limit.

And now I think I can say goodbye to the world of quantum ideas for a while and perhaps say goodbye to the world of feeling the need to be productive. I know I have no control over what happens and I also know it doesn’t matter what happens. I do not see the last seven years, or is it fourteen, or is it twenty one as a waste of resource, or energy, or time. If something more interesting or more compelling or more exciting had appeared I would have done something different. Moreover I have had a great time, and some wonderful experiences, and learned a lot, and most important, I am alive, and free, and well, and happy.

14.02.01 Saturday

I arrive at the funky Fairlawn Hotel in Calcutta after a six hour flight delay in Delhi and a wild taxi ride through the city at eleven o’clock in the evening to meet Stephen Inglis and Bill Semple who have already arrived. The Fairlawn Hotel is a wonderful throwback to the days of the Raj run by a now elderly English dowager with a history of charm and celebrity. Everywhere on the road in from the airport I see statues, clay images, which I learn later are part of thousands of fully painted, decorated, and dressed images of Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of learning and the arts, being prepared for the Puja in a few days time. A festival celebrating the goddess takes place each year in Bengal and primarily Calcutta with all of these images cast and elaborately decorated by artists and then gathered in portable temporary temples in each neighbourhood for four days when they all become part of a procession and are taken to the river and immersed to eventually dissolve to return and become silt in the river. Sorry to miss the event but delighted to learn about it and happy to be in India again with its astounding cultural expressions.

I am reminded as I talk with Stephen about the astounding challenges this part of the world, Bangladesh in particular, is having to deal with related to the retreating glaciers of the Himalayas as a result of climate change. It heightens the urgency of getting our community leaders and scientists and engineers to start to focus on the business case of dealing with this major issue of concern and bring our stories and our ideas for action together.

14.02.02 Sunday

We are off in the morning to the airport for our flight to Guwahati in Assam where we are met by our car and driver for a seven hour drive to Itanagar, the capital of Arunachal Pradesh. Our driver takes us into the state through an isolated border crossing on a shortcut of lonely dirt road, a somewhat surreal experience, which brings us in the back way but ends with a safe arrival at the very comfortable SC Continental Hotel. An exciting drive and I am happy, after a good meal, to climb into bed at nine o’clock for a long and much appreciated night’s sleep.

I am happy to leave Quantum Ideas alone for a while but I find myself awake at some time during the night becoming aware that my role now is simply to make the business case for each of the opportunities for creative community enterprise I have identified. The business case for creating a community media system is creating a communication system that makes creative community enterprise possible and changes the way we see and do things to improve our ability to create with our experience. That lifts the last burden of responsibility for what happens from how I feel about what I am doing and I can just indulge myself in the learning and creative experience. And in becoming who I like to be and living comfortably and appreciatively with my experience. Which is all I have and the only thing that is important to me. I think I have reached my own stage of Tibetan Buddhist enlightenment without having to spend my life as a monk in a monastery. I have found my own path.

14.02.03 Monday

I have some wonderful conversations with Stephen and Bill as we begin our exploration of Arunachal Pradesh and the cultures of the hill tribes who live here. Nehru was brilliant in protecting these minority cultures, allowing the people of these tribal cultures to travel out of the state and not allowing entry into the area until 1996, and even now requiring anyone permitted to enter the area to have some legitimate reason. Like the Cree, these cultures have survived and prospered around a respect for leadership and investment in the community as the required cultural behaviour. Traditional belief systems and organization systems are at the roots of their survival and prosperity, and their investment in educating their children, who are taught their own languages, and English, and Hindi, is moving them forward into the world they find outside their communities. The heart of the community lies in raising the children.

We visit the government emporium where I buy a hand-woven muffler from the Nyishi people, and the State Museum, and a Buddhist monastery where we are offered butter tea, and I get a better appreciation of how the different tribal cultures of Arunachal Pradesh evolved in each river valley that empty into the great Brahmaputra River that flows on to feed the south, each culture isolated from one another by the steep hills that form each valley but all flowing with the ideas and the influence of the Tibetan culture across the Himalayan plateau in the north. We meet Oren who helped organize our trip who is introducing shadow puppet plays as a way of telling traditional stories in his work with the University. A way of telling stories which varies with the storytellers, and the listeners, and the context of the time.

I am connecting dots in a relaxed and exciting way in a wonderful environment. My role, clearly, is to lead the conversation. To put out the possibilities I see we could pursue and how I think they could contribute to what I think are interests we have in common as individuals, as communities, and as a community. Our common human interests. And put out my ideas about what we could do, and my imagination of what could happen, and how we could make it happen,

Acceptance becomes an important contribution to the conversation, – a foundation idea of Buddhism. Acceptance of the realities of the world that we can observe and agree upon. Acceptance of how we are. Acceptance that we have a need to control. Acceptance that our ideas are easily influenced by the ideas of others and become habits and belief systems. Acceptance that exploiting one another and our weaknesses is an idea, and a practice, and a behaviour we pursue. Acceptance that we create rigid ideologies in our pursuit of certainty and control that define our behaviour as right or wrong as opposed to exploring what works and what doesn’t work as well, – the process of evolution. Acceptance that we all buy into and create ideas that become part of our individual belief systems against which we judge other ideas and behaviour as right and wrong and believe contrary ideas and behaviour need to be changed or suppressed.

But in our ideas we can find ideas we can all accept and agree upon that contribute to our common interests and to our ability to create community around our common interests.

The constraints of the ideas that we commonly agree upon that work for everyone make creative collaboration and creative enterprise possible and contribute to stimulating our creativity leaving room for our individual imagination and creative contribution. Ideas like do no harm with intent may be the fundamental idea on which all of our possibilities for our creative and cultural evolution and our survival are founded. Perhaps integrity, contribution, creativity, acceptance, and appreciation become what we value in common because they contribute to our individual, our community, and our common human interests, and to the successful pursuit of our creative interests and to our ability to imagine and create possibilities. The ideas at the foundation of our ability to engage in creative conversation in pursuit of ideas and opportunities for creative community enterprise and our ability to create a new world for our future and for the future of our children.

14.02.04 Tuesday

In moving the idea forward of creating a community media system to connect and increase the size and contribution of our communities of common enterprise around opportunities for creative community enterprise, and to improve our ability to create with our experience by improving our ability to create connections with and for one another, we need to begin with an acceptance that there is only a small community of people who have an interest in creating community to pursue creative possibilities for our future, and perhaps an even smaller community with an ability to contribute, and an understanding of how the investment of our creative resources, creative energy, and creative enterprise could improve our ability to create possibilities. Mobs can protest and revolt but only a small handful of people have the ability to explore for ideas and opportunities to pursue creative possibilities. There is a difference between believing an idea will contribute to our interests, and being able to think how an idea could contribute to our interests, and being able to demonstrate how an idea contributes to our interests.

Our second day in Itanagar and we visit the Tribal Museum at Rajiv Ghandi University and the Centre for Cultural Research and Documentation where we are hosted by Moyir Riba and see one of her brother’s films exploring the cultures and challenges of the people of Arunachal Pradesh. Moyir and Moji Riba are both children of one of the former chief ministers of Arunachal and are from the Galo tribe.

The handful of people at the Centre for Cultural Research and Documentation are doing an admirable job but there is a huge opportunity to explore and preserve the knowledge that lives in the language and stories of the elders of these tribal cultures before they are lost, – perhaps a job for the elders in the anthropology community to make the business case for documenting their ideas and experience and exploring and connecting parallels, similarities, and differences.

I am beginning to see how I can connect the dots, with ideas that provide the foundation of the creative process for our creative enterprise and our creative evolution, with our theatre of the new world as our open space, with Ken Wilber’s holon theory on how we are organized providing the structural framework, and with our appreciation, understanding, and acceptance of how things are, how we are, the nature of the world, and our human nature providing the foundation for focusing our creative exploration and for organizing our ideas and ourselves around opportunities to create as a community.

Creative exploration of what we have learned from our experience and creative exploration of what we are experiencing now from our different points of view becomes the primary and constant focus of our activity. And how we create connections with one another and contribute to one another is with our media, – the stories, information, ideas, observations, and opportunities we communicate in what we say and do and how we say and do things.

We set out in the late afternoon for a six hour drive to Ziro for a cold night in a new four room hotel located in the nearby countryside.

14.02.05 Wednesday

We set out for Daporijo in search of the Boor-Boot Festival celebrations of the Hill Miris or Nyisha tribe with another six hour drive, passing through spectacular hills and valleys and jungles and small communities perched on the sides and tops of hills and on the valley floor, many of the people wearing traditional clothing. The road is a winding one lane but traffic is light and our driver is good, as is the conversation.

Creative exploration of media contributed by others in our community is how we create connections that contribute to our learning, to our creative ideas, and to our creative enterprise.

Creative exploration for contributions to our creative interests, to our understanding, to our creative ability, and to our creative enterprise is how we create possibilities. Moving from the idea of listening, to the idea of creative exploration, is driven by our own self-directed choice of purpose, of enterprise, and of interest in improving our ability to pursue creative possibilities. Mastering the art of creative exploration for ideas begins with knowing what we want to do and what we imagine could happen.

14.02.06 Thursday

A day in Daporijo at the Boor-Boot Festival with teams of dancers and singers from every surrounding village performing traditional dances, and contemporary dances based on traditional dance movements, and dancers, elders and organizers all dressed in traditional costumes.

We enjoy the warm welcome of the community, many who want to have their pictures taken with the white and white-haired foreign visitors, and who speak with community pride about who they are and how they are a gentle peaceful people, and offer us hospitality. I am aware that the experience of community comes from their traditional respect for community elders and respect for investment in the community.

A respect for the knowledge of elders and the contribution of leaders and an appreciation and understanding of how contributing to the community is how we become part of the community, and valued by the community, and rewarded by the community, and respected and appreciated for the contribution is a simple foundation for community development and community evolution.

Our evolution and the evolution of our enterprise is rooted in communication, and creative conversation, and finding community in ideas, and creating community with ideas that contribute to our common interests, and our common enterprise, and our evolution. If we find community in ideas that contribute to the creative process, and that increase our contribution to our common interests, we can create community around the idea of creating a better world.

My contribution is to excite conversation around ideas I think could contribute to our ability to create community, to excite questions to improve our ability to explore our experience for ideas and opportunities, to excite our imagination about possibilities we could pursue as a community with what we have learned and can learn from our experience, and to excite enterprise to create possibilities by creating with our experience. If we create community around these ideas and interests, we can create community around opportunities for creative community enterprise that contribute to the interests we have in common.

What are the ideas I am contributing to excite creative conversation and interest in exploring ideas for creating community around opportunities for creative community enterprise? And what ideas could contribute to improving our ability to create with our experience? And what ideas could contribute to creating the possibilities we imagine? What could we do? What could contribute?

Changing the way we see ourselves and see one another in our community.
Agreeing upon ideas, interest, and behaviour that contribute to creating community
Learning the art of creative enterprise
Creating and agreeing upon a process that makes creative community enterprise possible.

Accelerating our ability to create connections
Operating beyond integrity
Improving our ability to create with our experience. And creating a culture of community we hold one another accountable for our contribution.

14.02.07 Friday

We leave Daporijo and return to Ziro and I realize, in builders’ language, that I am out of the ground.

Our overarching interest is not creating a new world but creating a future for our world. Our common interest. our common enterprise, and our creative storyline for quantum ideas.

How we contribute to creating a future for our world is by informing one another about what we learn, creating connections with our interests and our enterprise, contributing to improving our ability, increasing our resources, and exciting interest, imagination, and investment in ideas and opportunities for creative community enterprise that contribute to our common human interests. This is our common enterprise.

Our creative enterprise is developing a system and a way of doing things to create connections that increase the size of our communities of common interest and the contribution of our communities of common enterprise. And improve our ability to create with our experience. And accelerate our ability to create connections with a network of community media centres focused on opportunities and ideas for creative community enterprise.

Creating connections is how we learn, how we create, and how we evolve as individuals, as cultures, and as communities. Accelerating our ability to create connections is how we accelerate our creative and cultural evolution and our evolution as a community.

We create community around our common experiences, our common interests, and our common ideas.

Operating beyond integrity and contributing to our creative experience and to creating our experience is how we create community around our common experience of appreciation. Integrity creates trust. Contribution creates relationships. Creative contribution excites appreciation.

Community conduct is behaviour that is respectful, appreciative, considerate, open, honest, fair, and contributive.

Creative community enterprise around our community interests excites appreciation for the experience, and for one another and our different contributions, and for our common human nature of caring. Our humanity.

Increasing our understanding and appreciation of what contributes to and what militates against our ability to create community, and exploring and agreeing upon ideas, interests, and behaviour that contribute to creating community is how we improve our ability to create community.

Creative leaders create connections to increase everyone’s contribution, to increase everyone’s ability to contribute, and to increase everyone’s ability to create a place for themselves in the community.

What ideas do we think will contribute to creating community? Why do we think the idea will contribute? What do we know that contributes to why we think the idea will contribute? What demonstrated behaviour can we observe as evidence?

What ideas do we think will contribute to creating a future for our community? What demonstrated behaviour can we observe that contributes to why and how we think the ideas will contribute?

14.02.08 Saturday

We are in Ziro and I wake up to a gray and cold and rainy day which I can look out and listen to from my cozy bed in our small hotel a few kilometers outside the town of Hapoli. I can hear the birds chirping happily outside my window and I feel very happy to see the dots connecting more clearly in front of me. I can see our creative evolution, to our feeling of community, to our feeling of connectedness, and to our feeling of appreciation for our experience of life, for the ideas that contribute to improving our appreciation of our community, and of our life as a creative experience.

Creating music for our community is how we create community with music. Creating housing for our community is how we create a future for our community. Simple, elegant, and beautiful ideas. Creating possibilities for our future.

How do we create community to create a future for our world and to create a world that contributes to improving our experience of life?

Operating beyond integrity is how we improve our experience of life and our ability to create connections and community with one another.

Creating a language of ideas that contribute to creating community is how we create a culture of community and how we make creative community enterprise possible.

Creative conversation is how we learn to work with one another and how we learn to create community around opportunities for creative enterprise.

Obing, an Apatani who works at the hotel takes us on a tour of his village. Hong is the largest Apatani village in the valley and the second largest tribal village in Asia. He takes us to his home where we are welcomed by his mother and grandmother. He shows us where the elders of the clans in the community sit to resolve disputes. He tells how the babu poles outside the homes tell everyone how many sons have been born and live in each house.

In the corner of his home, the skulls of the Mithun oxen that were sacrificed at special events are gathered. Each family has a bamboo plot, a pine plot, a rice paddy, a market garden, and a granary where they store their rice and their valuables. Obing shows us the ceremonial area where the priest, – the nibou, – prays all night for the village for good fortune and good hunting.

We come away feeling that everyone is quite happy with how they live in a completely self-sustaining community that is peaceful and healthy and ordered. We visit the neighbouring villages of Hira and Hija and explore Hapoli before returning to our hotel.

Our worlds are so dramatically different that I wonder whether whatever I am doing makes any sense, having so little relevance for so much of the world. Everything I am doing seems a little bizarre so far way from Darwin and Einstein and the Western world. But I suppose I am just responding to the world I experience, where I live and how I live. My world. And feeling I want to do something for my world and my community as I see it, and as the people I know experience it and feel concerned and care about what is happening, and what could happen in the world as we know it.

14.02.09 Sunday

We set out early in the morning to travel back to Assam to re-enter Arunachal Pradesh a little further along the interline border and I set out with my lofty imagination and romantic notions tempered by the reminder that I am in a privileged position as part of a small community of people who can see a larger view of our world and can participate in creating possibilities for our future.

We pass through and make a brief visit to another tribal community village, the Mishing people, and stop for an Assamese tali at the Baideu Hotel, a little restaurant off the main road known to our driver which rarely if ever has foreign visitors, before arriving at the border again where we stay in some cottages on the river in a government run tourism facility. All the dots are connecting.

I can see that the process of creative conversation is the process of creative enterprise, with ourselves or with others. This is a process of creating connections, none of which will happen successfully, or at least consciously, if we do not have some skin in the game, where we are exploring for connections, exploring for opportunities for creative contribution to create connections, exploring for ideas for creative enterprise, and exploring for opportunities for creative leadership and creative entrepreneurship to get a return on our investment.

To participate in the larger community conversation in our theatre of the new world we have the opportunity to introduce ourselves, to tell our story, and to bring our ideas and contribute what we have learned, to create connections with our common interests, and to contribute our ideas and our enterprise to our creative community enterprise.

Giving everyone an opportunity to contribute to the conversation is how we eliminate racism and increase our understanding of gender and culture equality and our appreciation of our differences. My three stories from my Tahsis management training experience all contribute to increasing our understanding of how we are and how we could be.

When we give all of us the opportunity and ability to tell our stories, and contribute our ideas about what we do and why we do what we do, and our point of view from what we have come to learn, and our ideas about what we could do, we are curating our culture and contributing to creating our culture as a community as we connect with ideas we find we have community on and can create community around.

I am contributing ideas to our creative conversation and our creative enterprise I think could contribute to creating possibilities for our future, and I think we could create community around, and I think could contribute to our creative evolution.

And I am contributing my observations and ideas on what we could do and how we could do things I think could contribute to our interests.

For example, exploring what we say and do and how we say and do things for how they contribute to creating community behaviour is how we improve our media literacy.

Demonstrating community journalism is how we contribute to improving our media literacy as a community.

Improving our media literacy is how we improve our ability to create with our experience, for ourselves and for others, and enjoy the creative experience of community.

14.02.10 Monday

On the road again to Bomdilla and I am carrying forward with me a conversation with Stephen and Bill we had over dinner last night in the restaurant perched over the river about creating lodging, and dining, and creative experiences which increase the appreciation of the contribution of the cultures of the places we are attracted to explore and increase the contribution of the experience for the traveler.

I can also see the contribution of the idea of creating an inner line around the Great Bear Rainforest as a way of creating community among First Nations people and all the other communities concerned about the future of our world and interested in the leadership contribution Canada can make as a country. I see a sign on the road contributed by the Border Roads Organization that observes ‘A standing tree benefits everyone. A cut tree benefits only one’. It reminds me of the Apatani harvesting the pine for firewood to increase the yield of lumber.

If we are to increase the contribution of our resources, our enterprises, and our relationships we need to remove the fourth wall between us and them. We can remove the fourth wall by exciting interest in exploring opportunities to benefit from each others abilities, resources, relationships, and enterprise and from each others contributions and ability to contribute.

The relationships and community created by corporate enterprises and their communication resources could contribute significantly to accelerate our ability to create connections around our common interests and to exciting our interest in creative possibilities.

The larger the context we create for ourselves, the greater the probability we will be able to think creatively, and the more likely, the more able, and the more encouraged we will be to think creatively. Putting our enterprise in a larger context is how we will improve our ability to see, explore, and create relationships and creative enterprise with our communities of common and complementary interest and enterprise, and the more likely we will be able to see through the fourth wall and discern our constraining interests and remove our constraining ideas.

We create relationships and community around common experiences, common interests, and common ideas, and we create community behaviour and increase our creative contribution around constraining interests. Operating beyond integrity.

Government does not represent a community of interest. Government is a community contributor serving the interests of the communities it is created to represent and who have a place at the table, and a contribution to make, and a voice to express their point of view.

Quantum ideas provide the foundation of ideas about how things are and how things work and the overarching interests we can explore, agree upon, and create community around as a community interested in exploring and creating possibilities for our future. Creating possibilities for our future by creating a future for our common resources, our heritage, our children, our arts, our cultures, our environment, our systems, our economy, our well-being, and our community.

14.02.11 Tuesday

Bodmilla. It is cold. We are at an elevation of 8600 feet and our hotel has no heating. I have a small electric heater and after walking around the town Monday evening we decide the next morning, after a visit to the craft emporium, to set out for Tawang on a rough and largely one lane highway that takes us past a string of military camps to the 13,700 foot Sela mountain pass and through a beautiful mountain valley to our destination at 13,000 feet. Tawang is a few miles east of the Bhutan border and a few miles south of Tibet and home to what I am told is the largest Buddhist monastery in India and the birthplace of the sixth Dalai Lama.

The Indian army, second largest in the world after China, is heavily present along the border with Tibet as China continues to proclaim that Arunachal Pradesh is part of China. Peaceful coexistence at the moment. We are in land populated by the Monpa, influenced by Tibetan Buddhism for centuries like many other tribes here. On the drive through the pass we are enveloped by a low cloud and as we emerge on the other side the fog clears and the sun becomes visible and the Beatles are singing ‘Here comes the sun’ and everything is clear to me. I am the custodian of the story of the creative community enterprise I am imagining we can create community around. If my interests and ideas are interests and ideas we have in common, that we have community on, then we can work together as a community around creating possibilities for our future.

14.02.12 Wednesday

Tawang. We explore the Tawang monastery and the prayer hall and museum and streets and buildings and home to the 600 or so monks who live here exploring philosophy that contributes to creating a better life and traditions that contribute to creating community. The Gelukpa Buddhists.

In the book written by Verrier Elwin on the Art of the Northeast Frontier Province which Stephen found at our hotel in Ziro, Nehru, who maintained the idea of the interline for Arunachal Pradesh when India became independent was quoted as saying, “I am anxious that they should advance, but I am even more anxious that they should lose their artistry and joy in life and culture that distinguishes them in many ways.” I can see we have a wonderful opportunity to make an incredible contribution to the tribal people of Arunachal Pradesh and to our world, – an opportunity for creative community enterprise and an opportunity to create community.

I can see that my fourth book, “What we could do” is simply ‘Create a new world that works for everyone”. We created the world we see and experience now and contribute to creating a world that works better for some than others with what we choose to do and how we choose to do things. We can create a new world that works better for everyone by choosing to do things differently and choosing to do different things. The creative hypothesis that we can create a new world by creating new ways of seeing and doing things.

And my fifth book, “How we create a new world” is simply “Imagining and creating possibilities as a community”. Creating connections, relationships, and community around our common experiences, interests, and ideas. How things work. How things are.

14.02.13 Thursday

Dirang. I wake up in another cold hotel after our drive down from Tawang on Wednesday afternoon. And I awake to a clear picture of what I am doing and how I am going to contribute to creating what I imagine we could create.

I am going to communicate the foundation of ideas about how things are and how things work as I see them. I am going to communicate my ideas about what we could do as I see the opportunities. I am going to create a community media system to create the foundation for our ability to create possibilities for the future of our world. A communication system that could make it possible for us to connect, create, and increase the contribution of our communities of common enterprise. Connect, create and increase the size of our communities of common interest. And connect and create our community of creative enterprise exploring for ideas and opportunities to create possibilities.

I am going to do this by creating opportunities to contribute media to our opportunities for creative community enterprise as a creative community enterprise. Information on what we know and where we are. Our creative interests. Our creative ideas. Our creative community. Our creative resources. Our creative contributors. Our creative opportunities. Our creative enterprise. Our creative leaders. Our creative stories.

I am going to create a part for myself by leading creative conversations, contributing to creating stories, telling stories, creating connections around stories, and creating opportunities for people to tell their stories and create a part for themselves.

We have a wonderful day. The sun is warm, the air is clear, and the sky is blue as Bhuban leads us back behind the hotel on a trail through the woods to the old Monpa village of Dzong Basti, once the centre of a kingdom. There are nine clans in the community each with their own monastery or gompa. The track we followed that took us to the village was once a horse trail and is now a trail for woodcutters. In the village Bhuban takes us to his home for butter tea and we meet and are hosted by his wife, and mother, and a sister-in-law where Stephen buys a hand woven ensemble of traditional clothing worn by Monpa women. A singkha or skirt, a tudung or vest, and a chudang or belt, which Bhuban later refuses to take money for.

We visit the Dzong, a fortress built to protect the village which included a prison for people who didn’t pay taxes. Bhuban informs us there is no income tax in Arunachal Pradesh. The tradition of families sending their second son to a monastery continues for at least 30% of the families in the community. Today is a special day with a visit from a high Rinpoche Lama and the village is out to greet him and gather for prayers at the monastery we pass on our hike back to the hotel. It is a good day and our conversation continues about what we could do to contribute to creating a future for Arunachal Pradesh and the tribal communities that live here. My job is just to contribute to the conversation.

14.02.14 Friday

I am sitting in front of my tent in the late afternoon in the Nameri Eco-Camp in Assam about twenty kilometers south of the interline border listening to a jungle full of bird calls and bird songs, a wonderful relaxing and rich experience. I continue to write and rewrite ideas about how things are, and ideas about what we could do, and ideas about how we could do things to reduce them to the simplest and clearest articulation.

A successful enterprise and a sustainable enterprise is a creative enterprise, always exploring and pursuing new ideas and opportunities that contribute to the interests of the enterprise in a changing environment. A sustainable community enterprise is a self-sustaining creative enterprise. Creating sustainable communities is how we create a sustainable world. As I see it.

We improve our ability to create connections and community with one another by improving our ability to communicate with one another around our common interests and our common enterprise and around our creative exploration of ideas and opportunities that contribute to creating possibilities with one another that contribute to our common and complementary interests.

I am contributing my stories, ideas, learning experiences, and observations to excite creative conversation about what we could do to create community around creating possibilities for the future of our world.

14.02.15 Saturday

We set out at 6.00 am in a light morning rain with a packed breakfast to walk to the Bhorelli River where we are ferried to the other side in a wooden canoe for a trek through the Nameri wildlife reserve in search of wild tigers, leopards, jungle cats, elephants, gaur, – similar to but larger than the American bison, – sambar, – the largest deer in India, – and other wildlife and birdlife. We see traces of elephant, gaur, tiger, and python but have to be content with enjoying the huge array of birdlife, including the white-winged wood duck, – a rare species spotted and pursued by birdwatchers, – and when we get back to the camp, a beautiful hornbill, an endangered species much prized for its bill by the tribal people.

In the late afternoon we walk to and around a nearby Mishing village. We see the Himalayan Giant Squirrel and scaly insects and working elephants and a sambar being held by the wildlife conservationists and we had the pleasure of the company and knowledge of Krishna, a tour operator from Nepal who is an expert on birdlife, and a most enjoyable day of walking accompanied by our guide from the Nameri Eco-Camp and two armed guards with rifles for safety and very happy for the experience. I have been asked what I do and who I am a number of times since we began our trip as Stephen introduces himself as an anthropologist and a museum director and Bill introduces himself as an architect and a builder and I find myself moving from a stumbling explanation of who I am and why I am here in the early part of the adventure to reporting my occupation and introducing myself as a writer as I did so a number of years ago. Now however I know that is who I am and what I do.

14.02.16 Sunday

It rained all night and continued into the day so we cancelled our rafting trip on the river giving me some time to catch up on my notes and think about how I am going to tell my story, and the quantum ideas story, and the story of how we could create possibilities for our future, – the creative hypothesis that guides our creative enterprise, – or at least for the moment. My creative enterprise is to set out to connect and increase the size of our creative community around our creative enterprise of connecting and increasing the contribution of our communities of common enterprise, and connecting and increasing the size of our communities of common interest, with community media, and creative ideas, and opportunities for creative community enterprise.

My observations on how things are and how we are create the foundation for my ideas about what we could do and how we could do things to create possibilities for ourselves and for the future of our world. How we can create connections with community media. How we can accelerate our ability to create connections with media that excites word of mouth communication. How we can increase our appreciation of the contributions of other cultures. How we can increase our appreciation of what we can learn from our heritage and our heritage cultures. How the search for connections is the creative exploration of the web of causality and how new information, new insights, and new ideas could connect and contribute to our interests and to changing the way we see and do things.

How we create community, or agreement, on what we could do to create community enterprise around our common interests. How we explore ideas from different cultures to find ideas we have in common and can find agreement and community on. How we create connections with our culture and with other cultures through our creative expression, and through creative experiences and creative enterprise we could excite interest in. How we could create connections and experiences that contribute to our appreciation and understanding of our culture, and our cultures, and our ideas, and our ways of seeing and doing things that we have learned and define who we are.

How we can accelerate our ability to create connections by telling our story. Stories that create connections with experiences we have in common, with responses to our experiences we have in common, with interests we have in common, with ideas about what we could do and what could contribute to the interests we have in common. How telling our stories improves our ability to communicate through our individual circumstances, and culture, and points of view, and assumptions about our different circumstances, and culture, and points of view to create conversation around our common interest and ideas .

How we can accelerate our ability to create connections with media that contributes to creating community and behaviour that contributes to creating community. How we can accelerate our ability to create connections by exciting interest in creative exploration of opportunities for creative community enterprise. How we can accelerate our ability to create connections by creating connections to stories with stories.

How we can increase the size and contribution of our communities of common enterprise by giving everyone the opportunity and ability to create a place in the community, and contribute to creating the conversation, and to creating connections and community around their enterprise, and around our common enterprise, and contribute to creating possibilities for our common enterprise, and for the future of our community of enterprise, and how we can increase the contribution of our common enterprise to our common interests.

How we can accelerate our ability to create possibilities by focusing our attention and the investment of our resources on the people we want to create connections and communicate with and the community of common enterprise we want to create. The I CARE community.

How we can accelerate our ability to create connections by working with what we know rather than what we believe, and with what we know about how we are, – our common human nature, – and about how things are, – our environment and context, – and how we can create enterprise with what we have learned, and what we are experiencing, and what we can learn from our experience.

How we can increase the contribution of our communities of common enterprise by connecting our community contributors and our creative contributors to create new connections, and new ideas, and new opportunities for creative enterprise.

The Salish Sea Community Learning Centre’s interest is to create community around a common resource, one of many creative community enterprises that can contribute to learning how we create community, and learning what contributes to and militates against our ability to create community.

The Community Housing Centre’s interest is to gather together what we know about creating housing for our community that contributes to and recognizes the interests and resources and environment and culture of the communities we are creating housing for, the circumstances of the community, and the opportunity for the community to become part of the community contributing to creating the community.

In all community communication centres we want a common language, simple media accessible to communities of interest and enterprise who could benefit, and the opportunity for people to contribute their knowledge, observations, and ideas.

As we explore for, articulate, and find community around our keystone creative interests we are considering the importance, the contribution, the probability of contributing, and the ability to excite investment and enterprise around our creative interests and ideas.

Go Direct Media has evolved from a real time marketplace to connect buyers and sellers to connecting communities with media, with our communities of creative enterprise connecting our communities of common enterprise with our communities of common interest to increase the size of communities of common interest and the contribution of our communities of common enterprise to our common human interests.

Community journalists contribute information about what we know, and what is happening, and how it could connect to our interests. Creative storytellers contribute to increasing our understanding of ideas and opportunities and how they contribute and could contribute to our interests. Community journalists inform. Creative leaders and contributors create connections. Creative storytellers excite imagination and interest. Creative entrepreneurs and investors create enterprise.

Stephen gave me a brochure the Cree Cultural Institute called Securing the Future which was created to raise 13 million dollars for acquisitions and for an endowment fund to finance the ongoing operation of the Institute. I could see that a more imaginative story for the Cree community to build the future of the Institute could be Releasing the Possibilities. Creating connections with our heritage, our culture, and our stories of how we live in our world, to explore for ideas about how we could live in our world, and for ideas first nations people and all people could create community around and create a culture of community around that contributes to releasing possibilities for creative enterprise for the future of our community.

The Cree community has the ability, the resources, and the interest to create connections through the Cultural Centre with the heritage, the culture, and the ideas our community of indigenous cultures have about creating sustainable communities and creating communities that create possibilities for everyone. Creating sustainable communities is how we create a sustainable world. The Cree Cultural Institute could be the beginning of a new journey for the Cree, connecting the Cree community and creating connections with and for our other first nations communities to increase the contribution of the knowledge and learning and culture to creating community for our future.

14.02.17 Monday

I am awakened at 5.30 in the morning by one of the camp staff with a cup of ‘bed tea’, or coffee in my case, and we leave early for Guwahati and our flight to Calcutta having heard rumours about the possibilities of a political demonstration and a general strike that could block the highway, which fortunately did not materialize. We arrive back at the funky Fairlawn Hotel in time for an evening walk around the neighbourhood and a nice Bengali dinner. I find myself once again leaning into the idea of trying to make things happen as I imagine what the Cree Cultural Institute could do. I remind myself that my primary interest is increasing my ability to enjoy my experience of life. I can not make anything happen. I can only imagine what could happen and contribute my ideas and observations and enjoy the experience of expressing my point of view and creating experiences, or more particularly, contributing to creating experiences with others.

My approach to expressing my point of view is the same as what I imagine could work for everyone. My point of view is my ideas on how things are, how we are, where we are, what we could do, and what we could create. If we have community on any of these ideas and as I gather ideas from others we can all contribute to connecting the dots around our common interests and create common enterprise around opportunities we all imagine will contribute to creating possibilities for our future as a community.

I am creating a centre for interactive research in how we can improve our ability to imagine and create possibilities for ourselves as a community.

14.02.18 Tuesday

Calcutta. What a wonderful morning. We take a taxi around the city, past the Indian Museum established in 1814, past the Hotel Oberoi Grand where Stephen and I had a drink the night before, past the Post Office and the Writers Building, and out to the University of Calcutta, Stephen’s alma mater, and the India Coffee House, and the book vendors, and a tour of the Marble Palace, and a tour of the Museum, and lunch at the Oxford Book Store, all before we head to the airport for our flights to Mumbai and on to New York for Stephen and London for me. I am delighted to find a quote from Charles Darwin in the Indian Museum that says

“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change”

The India Coffee Shop, which is a cooperative, revives my idea of the Quantum Ideas Gallery and creative conversations broadcast to our theatre of the new world at different locations and with different experiences. I am creating a community media system for people to explore and contribute ideas and opportunities for creative community enterprise, and I am inviting contributions to the conversation from leaders and representatives of communities who could benefit from contributing to creating the possibilities, and the ideas, and the opportunities being explored. I am increasing my ability to enjoy my experience of life by increasing my knowledge, increasing my ability to think, and increasing my ability to create with my experience.

14.02.19 Wednesday

Home again after a wonderful experience in the land of the dawn-lit mountains, Arunachal. A new dawn where my overarching interest is to increase my ability to create with my experience and the overarching interest of our enterprise is to contribute to creating possibilities for the future of our world.

Having an overarching interest in our enterprise contributes to improving our ability to make decisions in response to our experience and our ability to explore our experiences for ideas and opportunities and enterprise that contributes to creating the possibilities we imagine.

I have an opportunity to write a story about what I imagine could happen for the Cree and the Cree Cultural Institute at the cultural crossroads of the new world and the beginning of a journey on the stage of our theatre of the new world. The Cree Cultural Institute creates a new opportunity for the Cree, connecting with the Cree community, connecting the Cree communities, and creating connections to contribute to other communities.

We are all beginning on a common journey in the world we have contributed to creating as we evolved with our different cultures, and our different ideas about how things are, and who we are, and what works to create a better world for ourselves and our community and our future, and we have the opportunity now to create a new world together.

Increasing our knowledge and improving our ability to learn, and to think, and to create with our experience is how we evolve, and how we improve our ability to enjoy our experience of life, and contribute to creating our experience of our world as a community.

I am a writer, imagining possibilities and doing what is possible to create a system and a way of doing things to improve our ability to create possibilities with our world as we know it. I can see a long way down the road and this is where I am now.

Connections

Centre for Cultural Research and Documentation

The Centre for Cultural Research and Documentation is a cooperative society documenting the histories, oral traditions and indigenous knowledge systems of Arunachal Pradesh in the light of globalized change and modernization. Their audio-visual documentation of folklore in Arunachal has earned the Centre a reputation for its research-intensive media and documentation work.

The Centre for Cultural Research and Documentation aspires to communicate information on Arunachal Pradesh to create connections and conversation and explore ideas and opportunities to respond to contemporary issues of identity and change.